Evolutionary multiobjective optimization in engineering management: an empirical study on bridge deck rehabilitation

There exist multiple objectives in engineering management such as minimum cost and maximum service capacity. Although solution methods of multiobjective optimization problems have undergone continual development over the past several decades, the methods available to date are not particularly robust, and none of them performs well on the broad classes. Because genetic algorithms work with a population of points, they can capture a number of solutions simultaneously, and easily incorporate the concept of Pareto optimal set in their optimization process. In this paper, a genetic algorithm is modified to deal with the rehabilitation planning of bridge decks at a network level by minimizing the rehabilitation cost and deterioration degree simultaneously

Improved sampling of the pareto-front in multiobjective genetic optimizations by steady-state evolution: a Pareto converging genetic algorithm

Previous work on multiobjective genetic algorithms has been focused on preventing genetic drift and the issue of convergence has been given little attention. In this paper, we present a simple steady-state strategy, Pareto Converging Genetic Algorithm (PCGA), which naturally samples the solution space and ensures population advancement towards the Pareto-front. PCGA eliminates the need for sharing/niching and thus minimizes heuristically chosen parameters and procedures. A systematic approach based on histograms of rank is introduced for assessing convergence to the Pareto-front, which, by definition, is unknown in most real search problems. We argue that there is always a certain inheritance of genetic material belonging to a population, and there is unlikely to be any significant gain beyond some point; a stopping criterion where terminating the computation is suggested. For further encouraging diversity and competition, a nonmigrating island model may optionally be used; this approach is particularly suited to many difficult (real-world) problems, which have a tendency to get stuck at (unknown) local minima. Results on three benchmark problems are presented and compared with those of earlier approaches. PCGA is found to produce diverse sampling of the Pareto-front without niching and with significantly less computational effort

A Hierachical Evolutionary Algorithm for Multiobjective Optimization in IMRT

Purpose: Current inverse planning methods for IMRT are limited because they are not designed to explore the trade-offs between the competing objectives between the tumor and normal tissues. Our goal was to develop an efficient multiobjective optimization algorithm that was flexible enough to handle any form of objective function and that resulted in a set of Pareto optimal plans. Methods: We developed a hierarchical evolutionary multiobjective algorithm designed to quickly generate a diverse Pareto optimal set of IMRT plans that meet all clinical constraints and reflect the trade-offs in the plans. The top level of the hierarchical algorithm is a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA). The genes of the individuals generated in the MOEA are the parameters that define the penalty function minimized during an accelerated deterministic IMRT optimization that represents the bottom level of the hierarchy. The MOEA incorporates clinical criteria to restrict the search space through protocol objectives and then uses Pareto optimality among the fitness objectives to select individuals. Results: Acceleration techniques implemented on both levels of the hierarchical algorithm resulted in short, practical runtimes for optimizations. The MOEA improvements were evaluated for example prostate cases with one target and two OARs. The modified MOEA dominated 11.3% of plans using a standard genetic algorithm package. By implementing domination advantage and protocol objectives, small diverse populations of clinically acceptable plans that were only dominated 0.2% by the Pareto front could be generated in a fraction of an hour. Conclusions: Our MOEA produces a diverse Pareto optimal set of plans that meet all dosimetric protocol criteria in a feasible amount of time. It optimizes not only beamlet intensities but also objective function parameters on a patient-specific basis

Evolving dynamic multiple-objective optimization problems with objective replacement

This paper studies the strategies for multi-objective optimization in a dynamic environment. In particular, we focus on problems with objective replacement, where some objectives may be replaced with new objectives during evolution. It is shown that the Pareto-optimal sets before and after the objective replacement share some common members. Based on this observation, we suggest the inheritance strategy. When objective replacement occurs, this strategy selects good chromosomes according to the new objective set from the solutions found before objective replacement, and then continues to optimize them via evolution for the new objective set. The experiment results showed that this strategy can help MOGAs achieve better performance than MOGAs without using the inheritance strategy, where the evolution is restarted when objective replacement occurs. More solutions with better quality are found during the same time span

Multiobjective algorithms to optimize broadcasting parameters in mobile Ad-hoc networks

Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Singapore, 25-28 September 2007A mobile adhoc network (MANETs) is a self-configuring network of mobile routers (and associated hosts). The routers tend to move randomly and organize themselves arbitrarily; thus, the network's wireless topology may change fast and unpredictably. Nowadays, these networks are having a great influence due to the fact that they can create networks without a specific infrastructure. In MANETs message broadcasting is critical to network existence and organization. The broadcasting strategy in MANETs can be optimized by defining a multiobjective problem whose inputs are the broadcasting algorithm's parameters and whose objectives are: reaching as many stations as possible, minimizing the network utilization, and reducing the makespan. The network can be simulated to obtain the expected response to a given set of parameters. In this paper, we face this multiobjective problem with two algorithms: Multiobjective Particle Swarm Optimization and ESN (Evolution Strategy with NSGAII). Both algorithms are able to find an accurate approximation to the Pareto optimal front that is the solution of the problem. ESN improves the results of MOPSO in terms of the set coverage and hypervolume metrics used for comparison

Optimal advertising campaign generation for multiple brands using MOGA

The paper proposes a new modified multiobjective genetic algorithm (MOGA) for the problem of optimal television (TV) advertising campaign generation for multiple brands. This NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem with numerous constraints is one of the key issues for an advertising agency when producing the optimal TV mediaplan. The classical approach to the solution of this problem is the greedy heuristic, which relies on the strength of the preceding commercial breaks when selecting the next break to add to the campaign. While the greedy heuristic is capable of generating only a group of solutions that are closely related in the objective space, the proposed modified MOGA produces a Pareto-optimal set of chromosomes that: 1) outperform the greedy heuristic and 2) let the mediaplanner choose from a variety of uniformly distributed tradeoff solutions. To achieve these results, the special problem-specific solution encoding, genetic operators, and original local optimization routine were developed for the algorithm. These techniques allow the algorithm to manipulate with only feasible individuals, thus, significantly improving its performance that is complicated by the problem constraints. The efficiency of the developed optimization method is verified using the real data sets from the Canadian advertising industry